In what turned out to be his final concerts, he led the Minnesota Orchestra in Anton Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in October, just after his 93rd birthday. It was a fitting farewell: Skrowaczewski had become known as one of Bruckner’s finest interpreters, and, when he retired as music director in 1979, Bruckner Eight was his valedictory.

Longtime Twin Cities music critic Michael Anthony said that his performance in October “seemed hardly the work of a man in his twilight years. It was bold, vigorous and dramatic, a prime example of what might be called this conductor’s later style, a reading with a strong sense of direction, of inevitability and flow.”
‘Out of this world, listening’

The Austrian composer, whom Skrowaczewski often referred to as “my beloved Bruckner,” is also tied to Skrowaczewski’s early story.

Stan was 7 years old, walking with a friend down a street in Lwow, Poland, when he heard music playing from an open window. He felt faint and feverish even the next day. “I stood there, completely out of this world, listening,” he recounted in a documentary, “Seeking the Infinite: Stanislaw Skrowaczewski — A Life in Music.”

“It turned out that it had been Bruckner, his Seventh Symphony,” he said. “And since then, Bruckner has been someone special.”

Rest in Peace, Mr. Skrowaczewski.

And thank you for your inspired, powerful interpretations of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies.